It’s no secret how successful and popular the Destiny franchise has become over the years. Recent DLCs like The Witch Queen and Lightfall shattered records and brought the player base to all-time high numbers. However, it’s also not a secret that more often than not, Bungie has had some missed opportunities to improve the game a little, and these are 10 of the biggest examples.
Adding New Mementos
At the time of writing this post, for the first time in nearly two years since the feature was introduced, Destiny 2 revealed a new Memento for crafted weapons for the Festival of the Lost event. However, the new “Lost Memento” is time-gated, meaning it’s only available while Festival of the Lost is live and will leave the game when the event ends in a few weeks.
While it’s cool that we finally have a new Memento in the game, it doesn’t excuse that there haven’t been any other new ones added over the last two years. Specifically, they very easily could have been added to the multiple Raids released, via something like a Taken Memento for the King’s Fall Raid that turns your gun into a Taken weapon.
In fact, it’s mind-boggling to consider that we don’t have any Raid Mementos, where they could be tied to completing Master Raids to make them all the more enticing to play.
Mementos are a great endgame material that makes crafted weapons all the more valuable with amazing shaders like the Trials of Osiris Memento that turns your gun all gold. The possibilities for Mementos could be endless, and Bungie really needs to start cashing in on them.
Adding Ornaments To Master Raids
It’s no secret that Master Raids have been a controversial topic since they were introduced early last year with the Witch Queen DLC. While improvements have been made here and there, Bungie definitely missed out on adding an ample loot opportunity: Ornaments. In particular, unique Armor Ornaments to either the pre-existing Raid Armor sets, or making new Master mode versions all together.
Before the Forsaken DLC, the Leviathan Raid featured a “Prestige” mode complete with Prestige Armor, which was the same Armor set from the normal version but with a unique purple glow on it. While it wasn’t super innovative, it was nonetheless a new Armor set for Guardians to chase in the higher difficulty Raid.
Fast forward years later, and Bungie has yet to do anything special with Raid Armor sets since then, with missed opportunities including the recent reprisal of the Crota’s End Raid. Bungie brought back the unique “Age of Triumph” Armor set from Destiny 1, which was a nice addition, but failed to bring back the normal Crota’s End Armor set. They could have made the Age of Triumph Armor a reward for completing the Master version of the Raid, or lock it behind challenges in the Master mode.
Either way, these options could have made the Raid — and other Master Raids — all the more enticing to partake in after acquiring the Seal for them.
Unvaulting Specific Strikes
We discussed this in length in our “It’s Time to Crack Open the Content Vault for More Destiny 2 Strikes” post, but Bungie has had multiple opportunities in the past few Seasons to unvault older Strikes.
In particular, with the recent reprisal of the Titan destination, we could have seen the return of the Savathun’s Song Strike. Instead, we saw previous “Battleground” activities turned into a Nightfall instead. Whether this was due to a lack of resources needed to do so or as a creative decision on Bungie’s part is unclear, but the end result is the same.
Strikes are in desperate need of a refresh, and the unvaulting of older year one and two Strikes could be the big break we’ve been looking for.
Make Seasonal Events More Worthwhile
The Seasonal events in Destiny 2 — which include Festival of the Lost, The Dawning, Guardian Games, and The Solstice — have always had up and down moments in their respective histories. However, one major problem they all share is that in the grand scheme of things, all of them aren’t worth partaking in.
Every year, Bungie does a great job in terms of cosmetics, making all of the new Ghosts, Sparrows, Ships, Emotes, and Armor Sets really cool and enticing to acquire. However, virtually all of them are locked behind the Eververse pay wall, where you either need to spend your real life money on Silver to buy them or use your hard-earned Bright Dust in the hopes of acquiring some of them, as the Bright Dust prices for them are extremely high.
While Bungie has introduced a new Memento for this year’s Festival of the Lost event, it doesn’t REALLY matter since it’s time-gated and won’t return until next October. Instead, Bungie should begin placing their fantastic cosmetics in each event’s respective activities. For example: Older Festival of the Lost loot should be available from Haunted Sectors, while the new cosmetics are kept behind the Eververse Store.
Furthermore, each year they have the community do a vote between two Armor Sets, and whichever set gets the most votes will be the featured Armor set for the Festival. Instead, Bungie should make both Armor sets, have one of them placed in the Haunted Sector that’s free for everyone to obtain, while the other set can be placed behind the Eververse Store.
Lack Of Clan Support
Clans in Destiny 2 are a fun way of bringing the player base together with one another to form teams of Guardians with similar skills and passions. There’s clans for Raiding, PvP, Nightfalls, Gambit (for the truly insane), and more.
However, there’s virtually no support for it, as the only way to join a clan properly is to go to the Bungie clan search page and request to join. Otherwise, players must go through third-party apps or sites to find clan leaders to receive an invitation.
Clans have such a high potential to make for some exciting events like weekly races to see which Clan can clear the most Raids, for example. Another example is having a tournament system where Clans can duke it out in the Crucible for an exclusive reward.
It’s these ideas and passions that makes Clans fun in the first place, and Bungie really misses the mark with them.
Adding Master Difficulty To Older Raids
Over the last few Seasons, Bungie has been going back into older Raids like the Deep Stone Crypt and Last Wish to make their respective weapons craft-able. While this is definitely a huge win for them, it stands that Bungie could have gone the extra mile to give these Raids a Master version, as currently, Deep Stone Crypt, Last Wish, and Garden of Salvation are the only Raids in the game without them.
It’s baffling why Bungie introduced a more complex version of a Raid back when the Leviathan Raid launched with Destiny 2 and then dropped it a year later with the Forsaken DLC, only to bring it back again last year with the Witch Queen DLC.
Thus, it’s time to bring some challenge and enticing loot back to these older Raids. Otherwise, they’ll be left in the dust once more when Guardians have all of the craftable weapons from them.
Adding Fishing To The Farm
Season of the Deep introduced a new mechanic into the game in the form of Fishing. It was a fun, laid-back activity that allowed Guardians to kick back and simply fish for loot. The rarer the fish, the better loot they got.
However, there was a catch. Fishing was available in three specific locations on the EDZ, Nessus, and Savathun’s Throne World, and it was only live during particular times, as the Fishing spots were in Patrol Zones. This meant that every once in a while, the Fishing Pond would disappear due to a Public Event spawning.
This quickly became very tedious, as when the pond disappeared, Guardians would have to go and complete the Public Event and then wait for a new pond to spawn.
In light of this, some players in the community came up with a fantastic alternative solution; add a Fishing Pond to the Farm. The Farm was previously a smaller Destination in the game where Guardians first started their journey during the Red War campaign, which has since been vaulted. The Farm was brought back as a Destination for Season of Defiance, but it’s only used as a small hub where you can’t really do anything anymore.
Adding Fishing to the Farm would be the perfect opportunity to not only make the Farm viable, but also make Fishing more worthwhile and enticing since there would be no Public Events to despawn the pond. The fact that Bungie hasn’t done so yet is honestly surprising, and we hope they realize the sure-fire win they’re just sitting on.
Adding A Third Darkness Subclass
Very recently, Bungie revealed The Final Shape DLC trailer and gameplay, and as we feared, it seems they are not adding a third Darkness Subclass.
Previously, we were introduced to the Darkness powers with the Beyond Light DLC in the form of Stasis, and now have access to the second iteration of Darkness, Strand, with the launch of the Lightfall expansion.
However, that leaves us with three Light subclasses and only two Darkness subclasses, creating an imbalance that, for me personally, is incredibly bothersome. While it seemed unlikely to receive a new subclass in back-to-back DLCs, it also seemed odd to finish out the Light and Darkness saga while an imbalance of three Lights and two Darks is present.
Of course, The Final Shape has yet to launch, so maybe Bungie is taking a different approach and keeping it hidden this time. But considering they went the route of adding new Supers to the already existing Light subclasses, it seems very likely this stands as a wasted opportunity to give us a third Darkness subclass to finish out the saga.
Removing Gambit
It’s hard to strictly call this one a “missed opportunity,” as it could also be called an “it’s time to move on,” element of Destiny 2.
In the recent State of the Game article, Bungie has stated they have no plans to update or improve Gambit anytime soon. While Gambit will still receive some new guns and shaders every Season, the game mode is fundamentally done, as it has yet to be updated in nearly four years and Bungie doesn’t plan to do so anytime soon.
Given this fact, it’s safe to say it’s finally time to part ways with Gambit. It was a cool concept when it was first released with the Forsaken DLC, but the mode never got the support it needed to take it to the next level truly. Now, it’s more or less taking up space that could be used for older content that is currently vaulted.
Adding A New Enemy Type
Wrapping up the list is, of course, the gigantic missed opportunity for both the Lightfall DLC and The Final Shape to add a new enemy race with Darkness enemies.
We have been fighting the Vex, Cabal, Hive, Scorn, Taken, and the Fallen for years since the franchise’s launch. While we’ve gotten a new Darkness enemy in the form of Tormentors with the Lightfall DLC, that was just one new enemy, not an entirely new race.
The Final Shape DLC is poised to share the same fate, introducing new variants of Tormentors called Subjugators that use Strand and Stasis abilities. It’s cool, there’s no doubt about that, but imagine facing an entire army of brand new enemies we have yet to encounter. Darkness enemies have so much potential, and unfortunately it seems Bungie won’t be capitalizing on it when The Final Shape launches early next year.
